Robots, Video Games, Gesture Controls… Need we say more? Probably not, but we will anyways. Tibco Software, a global leader in business intelligence software, needed a way to demonstrate its intensive line of real-time and post-processing analytics products at their annual user conference in San Francisco. Our challenge was to create a fun experience that would entertain, generate buzz, draw users to the showroom floor, and generate loads of fast data to showcase their product suite’s capabilities.

To rise to the occasion, Future Colossal created a custom video game using a Kinect v2 to read body movements and mimic those motions with a robotic arm. Two players went head-to-head, using their bodies to thrust the robotic arm around a moving data pipeline to collect events (ie. points). Different power-ups were also present, giving one player a potential advantage over the other. Power-ups could speed up or slow down a player, magnetize points, or on the more extreme – shock their opponents arm to zap it out of action for a few seconds. The robot arms were programmed to display their emotions at the end of the game, with the winning robots pumping up and down in celebration, and the loosing robot hanging its head in defeat.

Connected to the Tibco sdk, the game sent a constant stream of data, tracking everything from player movements, performance against competitor, score ranking, where motion paths differed between players, load on the robotic arm servo motors, and much more. The data was parsed in real-time, displayed using custom charts and graphs for each player on large monitors at either side of the experience. The game was a blast to play and made it easy for brand ambassadors to demonstrate the value of Tibco’s offerings in an entertaining setting while up-selling their userbase on their additional product offerings. The biggest challenge we faced was clearing the crowd at the end of the day!